The first reference to the town of Gaza comes during the reign of Tuthmose III. It is also mentioned in the Tell Amarna Letters. Its strategic location on the coastal road connecting Egypt to Palestine made it a thriving trade center and an important Egyptian outpost. Three hundred years of Egyptian occupation were ended when the Philistines, a tribe of the Sea Peoples, captured the city ...

Gaza is the most southern as well as the most famous of the five federated cities of the Philistines. Being situated on the great coastal highway between Egypt and Mesopotamia and at a junction of the trade route from south and central Arabia, it was an important commercial and military center from Canaanite times ...